The NCAA announced Thursday that Arizona’s infractions case has been officially transferred to the Independent Accountability Review Process, taking it off the standard NCAA resolution track.
Whether that’s a good thing for the Wildcats — or at least a faster course of action — remains completely unknown.
The IARP is new and different process than the standard peer-reviewed NCAA track, which ends during a hearing in front of the infractions committee and can be appealed.
The IARP instead reviews the NCAA enforcement staff’s work, modifies or extends it as it deems fit, and then passes it on to a panel made up of five people with legal, higher education and/or sports backgrounds who are not affiliated with NCAA sports. The panel issues a decision that cannot be appealed.
The IARP was implemented following a recommendation from the Rice Commission, which was created in the wake of the 2017 federal investigation into college basketball. It has since accepted complex infractions cases from five different schools. None of them have yet to be ruled on: Memphis’ case was folded into the IARP in March, N.C State’s in May, Kansas’ in July and LSU’s in September before Arizona jumped in this month.
Arizona acknowledged in October that it had received an NCAA Notice of Allegations, though the school would not release it publicly. It also denied the Star’s multiple public-records requests for the NOA, saying it was “in the best interests of the state” to hold it back. The Athletic reported that the NOA contained five Level I (most serious) violations.
Paul Kelly, a Boston-based outside attorney Arizona hired to oversee its NCAA issues, told the Star on Thursday that he could not comment under NCAA rules until a final decision is reached.
But while the four other schools had cases believed to be referred to the IARP by either the infractions committee or NCAA enforcement staff, Arizona Board of Regents chair Larry Penley confirmed that UA President Robert C. Robbins requested the case be moved to the IARP.
In addition, The Athletic reported that Kelly asked for a referral to the IARP by stating that Arizona wanted “a neutral and unbiased tribunal to hear the evidence, consider the legal and factual arguments, and issue a decision that is fair and just.”
There are no precedents to indicate what, exactly, Arizona will receive. But Naima Stevenson Starks, the NCAA’s VP for hearing operations, said the IARP process still follows the same NCAA rulebook and “penalty matrix” as the standard hearing process.
“They can’t just say, ‘I’m gonna give you a 20-year show-cause for this or a 15-year postseason ban for that,’ because they’re so confined by the member-adopted penalty structure,” Stevenson Starks said. “They could look at the application of the bylaws, and maybe not necessarily do something exactly the way the Committee on Infractions may have handled it in another case, but they’re still confined to that bylaw.”
So basically, the difference with the IARP is in how the process works and who does it.
Instead of handling things in-house with NCAA and/or college administrators, the IARP includes an oversight committee chaired by former Duke star and Atlanta Hawks co-owner Grant Hill. That committee determines what firms and individuals will handle any one school’s case, first within an investigatory Complex Case Unit and then with a decision-making Independent Resolution Panel.
Once a case has been formally accepted into the IARP, two firms are assigned to handle it as part of the Complex Case Unit — one with professional investigators and the other a law firm.
Although an infractions case can be referred to the IARP at any time, cases that already have received a Notice of Allegations such as Arizona feature an NCAA enforcement staff investigation that is already finished. So it is up to the Complex Case Unit to decide whether to expand, modify or completely start over with the enforcement staff’s work.
“What has occurred in the peer review process is not automatically accepted in the independent structure,” Stevenson Starks said. “There will have to be a new notice of allegations. It could be the same if there was one issued previously, but the Complex Case Unit has to make that assessment.”
Once it sets a direction with a school’s case, the CCU separates the investigation work and advocacy work that, in the standard process, is done jointly by the NCAA enforcement staff. The assigned law firm will eventually present the findings to the hearing panel.
“They might actually take a little bit more of a position on the allegations that they’re putting forth but we don’t know that for sure because it hasn’t happened yet,” Stevenson Starks said. “But the roles for certain have been separated out in the independent process.”
Once the CCU issues a new or revised NOA, the case moves to the IARP Independent Resolution Panel and a hearing is set. The panel’s ultimate decision cannot be appealed.
While that panel has yet to issue a verdict on any school yet, there is also no expected timeline — partly because cases can enter the IARP process at any time and they may need wildly varying amounts of investigation or review.
However, the chief panel member for each case can set a “case management plan” that sets deadlines for schools or other parties to respond by.
That varies from the standard process, in which schools have 90 days to respond to an NOA and the NCAA enforcement staff has 60 days to respond to that — a maximum of five months needed even before an infractions committee hearing is set.
“I think that there is greater flexibility in the independent structure than in the peer review process,” Stevenson Starks said. “It’s not fair to say there’s no timeline — it’s that there’s no legislated timeline. The chief panel member has the ability to say ‘This will be the timing for when things have to be done’ and it could be well short of five months.”
Or maybe not. And the IARP could reach the same decision that the NCAA infractions committee would have anyway ... or maybe not.
The only thing Arizona knows now is that it is one of five cases that could eventually become IARP precedents of sorts, guinea pigs for a new, alternative resolution path for college sports programs accused of NCAA violations.
